Posts categorized "Current Affairs"

December 06, 2016

Defining the role of the Chief Science Officer to lead the government’s efforts to advance both basic and applied science and working with the Secretary of the Cabinet to recruit that individual by spring 2017. Consulting with and engaging the scientific community and the broader public as you develop the mandate of the Chief Science Officer.

Working with educators, communities, other ministries and the Chief Science Officer to promote science literacy throughout the province.

The Ontario provincial Chief Science Officer is expected to be supported by team. The competition (recruitment) for the CSO has not yet been announced.

The letter says "Create a Chief Science Officer mandated to ensure that government science is fully available to the public, that scientists are able to speak freely about their work, and that scientific analyses are considered when the government makes decisions."

The job posting says "The Chief Science Advisor's main function will be to advise the government on how to ensure that government science is fully available to the public, that scientists are able to speak freely about their work, and that scientific analyses are considered when the government makes decisions."

September 07, 2016

As Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities’ Chief Information Officer (CIO) as well as its Departmental Security Officer (DSO), the CIO provides vision, strategies and leadership in the provision and transformation of Information Technology (IT) and Information Management (IM) strategies as well as personnel, physical and IT security and facility management strategies that align with and supports the Agencies mission, mandate, strategic and business objectives.

Job title:Chief Information Officer and Departmental Security Officer

Job number:J0816-0999

Job category:Information technology

Location of position:Ottawa, Ontario

Job status:Indeterminate

Number of positions being staffed:1

Classification:GR-EX-03

Competition number:N0816-0999

Language requirements:Bilingual Imperative (CBC/CBC)

Open To:Canadian citizens and permanent residents located in the National Capital Region

The Innovation Agenda will look at how to strengthen applied research while promoting partnerships with businesses so that the knowledge and discoveries generated in the lab make their way to the market.

In other words, support for world-class research is critical to making innovation a national priority.

As well, the government has opened a two-week window of consultation on Reddit, which I think means it will close July 6, 2016.

There was a National Press Gallery event (which the above speech is from) and a Canada 2020 event at the Chateau Laurier. The Canada 2020 event was livestreamed and the archive is available on YouTube.

February 18, 2016

Concept

Global Affairs Canada is pleased to announce the inaugural International Policy Ideas Challenge, designed to identify concrete innovative solutions to emerging international policy challenges by drawing on the network of talented graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in Canada.

Both reports have now been released. The commenting period for the self-assessment closed January 18, 2016, but the commenting period for the independent assessment just opened today (February 2, 2016).

Open science is now a proposed action (proposed commitment) in the phase 3 activitives consultation. This is the last phase of online consultation. The next step will be to issue the OGAP 2 plan.

The feedback on the proposed idea does not carry over to the proposed action. If you want to be heard again, you have to post comments on the proposed action: Open Science.

UPDATE 2014-09-20: The action consultation (phase 3 consultation) is now closed, as of Sept. 19, 2014. However, the data.gc.ca mailing list has announced that there will be a 4th phase of consultation "to request public input on the draft version of Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0" from Oct. 6-17, 2014Oct 9, 2014. ENDUPDATE

There are also still in-person consultations to be completed. You can read about them here and here.

August 11, 2014

On August 11, 2014 the White House announced the formation of a US Digital Service, as reported in the Washington Post

The White House on Monday announced that is was formally launching a new U.S. Digital Service and that they've hired to lead it Mikey Dickerson ...

U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel called it a "centralized, world-class capability...made up of our country’s brightest digital talent," forming a team that will be "charged with removing barriers to exceptional Government service delivery and remaking the digital experiences that citizens and businesses have with their Government."

The organisation will apparently be referred to as the USDS - I couldn't find a website yet. The Washington Post article points to a document on the CIO.gov site - U.S. Digital Services Playbook http://playbook.cio.gov/ that may give some ideas of the goals of the organisation. The article indicates the model will be for the service to be a centre of expertise on design and transformation of services for the digital environment.

February 27, 2014

... you will contribute to client success by performing R&D trend analysis using advanced data and text analytics tools and methodologies. You will expose research fronts and model the business and technical environments through deep-dive analyses of patenting and scientific publishing activity, within the context of industry and market activity. Using state-of-the-art visualization tools, the SIA identifies key clusters of expert networks and discovers new areas of application for emerging technologies. The SIA is responsible for the promotion, and delivery of scientific, technical and industry analysis projects.

November 20, 2013

Nine years ago and a few days, I was on the taxi to the airport from Internet Librarian 2004 and in chatting with the driver he said something like "have you heard Google is doing something for academics?".

I hadn't. It was Google Scholar.

So it seems appropriate that nine years ago to the day when I first created my blog and posted about the launch of Scholar, I'm writing about a new feature: Google Scholar Library.

Today we’re launching Scholar Library, your personal collection of articles in Scholar. You can save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar's full-text search to quickly find just the one you want - at any time and from anywhere. You decide what goes into your library and we’ll provide all the goodies that come with Scholar search results - up to date article links, citing articles, related articles, formatted citations, links to your university’s subscriptions, and more.

If you have feedback for the third-party report you still have time to complete the official independent survey (also linked at the top of this post). The independent reporting is being done by Dr. Mary Francoli of Carleton University.

October 20, 2013

The three Canadian granting councils (funding for researchers) are NSERC (natural sciences), SSHRC (social sciences), and CIHR (health & medicine). Collectively the Tri-Councils or Tri-Agencies.
They have a proposed open access policy available as HTML and PDF.

Please note that the draft policy is accessible until December 13, at which time the consultation period ends. Responses should be sent electronically to openaccess@nserc-crsng.gc.ca

October 13, 2013

The Canadian Open Data Experience – CODE – is a 48 hour nationwide app development competition

The event is sort of softlaunched, in that the date isn't posted yet. Minister Clement announced it, and later said

The other thing that I announced today, by the way, is our first appathon, where we're going to invite entrepreneurs of all ages next February [2014] to go onto the data.gc.ca website/portal and in a 48-hour period come up with the next app that uses Canada's open government data and develop something that will be of use to citizens

The government is supporting it, but not running it. It will be run by XMG, who do the similarly-named but separate Great Canadian Appathon(it's not clear if the events will be one and the same in 2014).

August 06, 2013

Tapping into Canada’s Foreign Aid Data

August 24th-25th, 2013

HUB Ottawa, 71 Bank Street

"The hackathon will bring together technologists, data analysts, and
international development experts from across the sector to create
useful products, insights and analysis of Canada’s international aid
data."

You have to apply to attend, deadline for applications is August 8, 2013.

June 18, 2013

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today formally adopted an Open Data
Charter with other G-8 Leaders at the Lough Erne Summit in Northern
Ireland. In keeping with the Charter, the Prime Minister announced the
upcoming launch of a new Government Open Data Portal, data.gc.ca, which
will provide Canadians with unprecedented access to government data
and information. The next-generation Open Data Portal will be
officially launched on June 18, 2013, by Treasury Board President Tony
Clement.

UPDATE: Down in the technical annex there are some very specific commitments, including metadata mapping on GitHub.

Action 1: G8 National Action Plans

We will publish individual action plans detailing how we will
implement the Open Data Charter according to our national frameworks
(October 2013)

We will report progress on an annual basis (via the G8 Accountability Working Group) (2014 and 2015)

Action 2: Release of high value data

As a first step, we will collectively make key datasets on National
Statistics, National Maps, National Elections and National Budgets
available and discoverable (from June 2013), and we will work towards
improving their granularity and accessibility (by December 2013)

We recognise that collective action by all G8 members has the
potential to unlock barriers and foster innovative solutions to some of
the challenges we are facing. We therefore agree on a mutual effort to
increase the supply of open government data available on key functions
of our States, such as democracy and environment. We will work on
identifying datasets in these areas by December 2013, with an aim to
release them by December 2014.

We will set out in our national action plans how and when we will
release data under the remaining categories according to our national
frameworks (October 2013).

Action 3: Metadata mapping

We have contributed to and commit to maintaining the G8 metadata mapping exercise (June 2013)

2013 Lough Erne G8 Leaders' Communiqué

UPDATE 2013-06-19: The communiqué contains additional commitments in the Open Data section, including

48. This Open Data Charter will increase the supply of open government data across a
number of key categories including health, environment and transport; support
democratic processes; and ensure that all data supplied are easy to use. We encourage
others to adopt this Charter. G8 members will, by the end of this year, develop action
plans, with a view to implementation of the Charter and technical annex by the end of
2015 at the latest. We will review progress at our next meeting in 2014.

50. G8 members should over time apply the Busan common transparency standards to their
respective Development Finance Institutions and international public climate finance
flows consistent with the reporting of climate finance under the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).